her service at all times, always ready to take her
motor-cycling, or to play tennis or golf with her; and although Iris was
as free from vanity as any girl could possibly be, it was not unpleasing
to her youthful self-esteem to find a man like Cheniston over ready at
her beck and call.

With Anstice she was quieter, shyer, more serious; yet Sir Richard, who
watched the trio, as it were from afar, had a suspicion sometimes that
the Iris whom Anstice knew was a more real, more genuine person than the
gay and frivolous girl who laughed through the sunny hours with the
younger man.

So the days passed on; and if Anstice was once more living in a fools'
Paradise, this time the key which unlocked the Gate of Dreams was made
of purest gold.

* * * * *

In the middle of July Iris was to celebrate the eighteenth anniversary
of her birth; and rather to Anstice's dismay he found that the event was
to be marked by a large and festive merry-making--nothing less, in fact,
than a dinner-party, followed by a dance to be held in the rarely-used
ballroom for which Greengates had been once famous.

"You'll come, of course, Dr. Anstice?" Iris asked the question one sunny
afternoon as she prepared an iced drink for her visitor, after a
strenuous game of tennis. "You do dance, don't you? For my part I could
dance for ever."

"I do dance, yes," he said, taking the tumbler she held out to him, with
a word of thanks. "But I don't think a ball is exactly in my line
nowadays."

"It's not a ball," she said gaily. "Aunt Laura doesn't approve of oven a
dance, seeing I'm not really 'out' till I've been presented next
year--but Dad has been a perfect dear and says we can dance as long as
we like down here where none of our London relations can see us!"

"Well, dance or ball, I suppose it will be a large affair?" He smiled at
her, and she told herself that he grew younger every day.

"About a hundred and fifty, I suppose," she said lightly. "The room holds
two hundred, but a crowded room is hateful--though an empty one would be
almost worse. Anyhow, you are invited, first of all. Dinner is at seven,
because we want to start dancing at nine. Will you come?"

Just for a second he hesitated. Then:

"Of course I'll come," he said recklessly. "But you must promise me at
least three dances, or I shall plead an urgent telephone call and fly in
the middle!"

"Three!" Her grey eyes laughed into his. "That's rather g